The Amapá Health Department is investigating how a fungus infected more than a hundred patients who underwent cataract surgery. Seven of them went blind.
The program has been organized by the Amapá government for three years and has carried out 110,000 surgeries, most of them for cataracts.
On September 4, 141 patients underwent surgery at the headquarters of the Capuchin order, in Macapá. Of this total, 104 began to complain days after the operation.
“I operated in one day. The next day I did the assessment, everything was fine. I came home, had dinner and slept. When I woke up, everything was dark, it hurt, I couldn’t see anything anymore”, says retiree Maria Alves.
The Department of Health confirmed that they had an acute eyeball infection caused by a fungus called fusarium. 55 underwent new surgery to try to reverse the infection – and another 14 had a cornea transplant. Seven lost vision in one of their eyes permanently. Seu Antônio is one of them.
“I have difficulty getting here from the living room to the kitchen, I just have to feel the wall. So for me it is a difficulty.”
The state government maintains the program with federal resources. Since 2020, it has contracted with a religious institution, the Frei Daniel de Samarate human promotion center. The center, in turn, subcontracted the company Saúde Link. The Saúde Link technical representative states that he followed all safety and hygiene procedures.
“In that week that started on the 4th and ended on the 8th of September, we operated on 540 patients, and it only happened on the 4th and it really is something new, a tragedy. We obey all the rules of national and international protocols”, highlights Afonso Neves, technical representative at Saúde Link.
As soon as the State Public Ministry’s Health Prosecutor’s Office learned of the situation, it ordered the program’s activities to be suspended for an indefinite period of time. Surgeries will only be resumed with authorization from the National Health Surveillance Agency.
“We work in the area of agents in three areas, together with surveillance and with Anvisa, which is to identify what happened, whether it was a problem with the product, whether it was a problem in the environment, whether it was a problem with the procedure used ”, highlights Weber Penafort, MP/AP health promoter.
At the request of the Public Ministry, the Department of Health opened an investigation.
“It is a fungus that, if left untreated, is devastating. It can lead to blindness, but patients are being treated, they are being referred for surgery, using antibiotics, so everything necessary for treatment is being done for all patients”, says Silvana Vedovelli, secretary of health at the Amapá.
The Capuchin order says it is providing care to the sick.
“The main focus is precisely on assisting people, and that is what the institution has been doing since the first reports of the infection were made”, explains a representative of the institution.
An ophthalmologist says that the case needs to be investigated, to improve care in surgical centers and joint efforts. He reaffirms that the operation is safe.
“Cataract surgery is a surgery today considered very safe, it is one of the most performed surgeries in the world, because safety guarantees this. So these serious infection events have an acceptable rate of one in every 3,000 surgeries, so it is a rare event and there is no need to be afraid of undergoing the procedure”, he highlights.
